After a week of progress with designing a new, custom skeleton for an articulated figure, I realised that to get where I wanted to be by the end of the week, I needed to stop working with 3D software and start working with my hands. For that, I had to try sculpting polymer clay hair.

Slowly heading towards conscious competence

With the learning curve of 3D software, I’ve been wallowing at the bottom of conscious incompetence for some time. Suddenly, I’ve found myself at a point where I know what to do to create certain effects, and I’m not just fumbling around entirely blindly. The thing is, even though I’m happy to be making progress, I realise that I’m still struggling to create things that I can do easily by hand.

Buying a bit of polymer clay and having a go seemed to be the sensible choice to tackle my hair problem.

Since I never touched polymer clay before this point, there was a bit of time in the same valley of conscious incompetence, but it didn’t take much to get to a level where I could get close to my goal.

My figure’s hair has been a bit deal for me from the start. I only started wearing my hair straight a few months ago, so having a choice of hairstyles was always part of my plan.

I can’t represent myself without my big natural hair, even though I’m a part-time straightener right now. Working out a way to swap hair in the same way I swap hands is absolutely essential, but a way beyond my current Blender skill set. Maybe combining both the low-tech and high-tech will present an even bigger breakthrough soon.

My portrait of the week is a quick ballpoint pen hatching study inspired by a mad hair day and a fast-moving creative week. It’s weird, but I kinda like it.

Last week

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